DataXu Raises $27M for Big Data Marketing

Venture capitalists are showing the love for Big Data startups, especially those with solutions geared toward marketers. The latest to get funding is Boston-based DataXu.

Boston-based DataXu announced today that it had raised $27 million in a round of funding led by Thomvest Ventures and backed by Atlas Venture, Flybridge Capital Partners and Menlo Ventures.

DataXu's marketing platform employs Big Data analytics to identify prospective customers, automate ad targeting and optimize media spending. According to the startup, its platform can increase ROI up to five times over traditional techniques and reduce media and data management costs by up to 40 percent.

The last six months have seen an increase in Big Data investment activity, with investors showing particular interest in companies offering solutions for marketers. This isn't surprising, given results of a recent survey that found marketers planning to increase their spending on Big Data.

In an announcement of Data Xu's funding round, CEO Mike Baker outlined what his company's technology does for marketers seeking to attract today's tech-savvy, connected shoppers. "Our software helps marketers reduce the cost and complexity of marketing across multiple digital channels, while at the same time enabling them to build a much deeper and more actionable understanding of today's empowered consumer," he said.

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DataXu is growing by leaps and bounds, wrote Baker in a company blog post. "… It's a reflection of the record-breaking year we had in 2012, which saw us expand to 11 offices in eight countries, triple our customers and triple our team size." Revenues from direct-to-enterprise sales of the DataXU platform jumped 700 percent year-over-year, said the company, and now constitute the lion's share of the company's income.

"The rise of programmatic marketing is reminiscent of how automation and software also revolutionized the financial services industry. We believe DataXu is in the vanguard of an even bigger opportunity and on a trajectory to become the next great enterprise software company," said Thomson in a statement.